Stuck with Jira — and Stuckons
Jason Sachs vents about Jira’s quirks and why it still feels stuck despite years of fixes. He walks through concrete pain points: nonstandard markup, relentless notification noise, poor meta-task support, and limited analytics that make day-to-day engineering work harder. To explain why schedules blow up, he introduces a simple kepton model of planons, workons, and stuckons that highlights unexpected work.
Baking in Process Improvements
Jason Sachs uses a backyard cookie-baking session with his niece to illustrate practical process improvements engineers can apply. He documents batch-by-batch tweaks — temperature, dough placement, and a pipelined scooping step — that raised throughput and improved quality, then connects the lesson to pilot projects and small automations like a Python script for JIRA. The piece makes the case for quick experiments and a culture that rewards refinement.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 3
Jack Ganssle shows us what we can learn by studying previous failures - and why this is essential for anyone working in embedded systems.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 2
A look back at a deep dive into the Mars Perseverance flight software from one of the technical leads at JPL.
Sheep Bridge: In Praise of Generalists and System Engineers
Jason Sachs makes the case for hiring generalists and valuing system engineers, because they do more than take a high-level view. He explains how multi-scale thinking, arbitration among subsystems, and clear visualization prevent integration failures, using concrete examples from battery-voltage tradeoffs, Sheep Bridge map lessons, and encoder signal checks. Read this for practical rules that keep embedded projects coherent.
What I Learned From Crashing and Burning in Grad School
Have you ever felt so consumed by something that it started to crowd other parts of your life? So obsessed with success in a particular area that you could hardly think about anything else? I found myself in exactly that spot in 2018 when I first started graduate school; I wanted to succeed so badly that I worked myself to the bone and I let even my marriage and my health suffer in service to it. This state of being is, believe it or not, NOT conducive to success, in neither the long-term nor the short-term. But it took two authors and one pivotal book for me to understand that, to see the pit I had dug for myself, and to begin the path back out. In this blog, I want to share with you my journey in the hopes that you can avoid the mistakes I made.
The Missing Agile Conversation
In this article, we learn about Agile practices and how they use stories as units of development. Stories consist of a brief description, one to a few sentences. They don’t contain details sufficient to allow a developer to implement them. The Agile practice is to defer details as long as possible because conditions may change. When a developer takes on a story to implement, that’s the time for them to perform the work that has been deferred. They do this by having a conversation, a series of specific discussions working closely with the various SME’s (Subject Matter Experts) who have information relevant to the story.
In Memoriam: Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. and The Mythical Man-Month
Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month is still a surprisingly sharp guide to software projects, and Jason Sachs shows why it matters even more than its old mainframe setting suggests. He revisits Brooks’ ideas on surgical teams, conceptual integrity, throwaway prototypes, and schedule estimation, then maps them to modern embedded and software engineering realities. The result is a tribute, a book review, and a practical reminder that roles, architecture, and testing still make or break delivery.
Review: Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager
You don't need a PMP to manage effective engineering projects. Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager, by Kory Kogon, Suzette Blakemore, and James Wood, distills PMBOK concepts into readable, lightweight procedures for people who end up coordinating work without formal training. The book emphasizes people-first behaviors, simple process groups, and concise documentation so engineers can manage risk, scope, and change without heavy bureaucracy.
Stuck with Jira — and Stuckons
Jason Sachs vents about Jira’s quirks and why it still feels stuck despite years of fixes. He walks through concrete pain points: nonstandard markup, relentless notification noise, poor meta-task support, and limited analytics that make day-to-day engineering work harder. To explain why schedules blow up, he introduces a simple kepton model of planons, workons, and stuckons that highlights unexpected work.
Code Metrics - SLOC Count
Metrics and SLOC can trigger flashbacks for experienced engineers, but counting source lines of code still has practical uses when applied sensibly. This post clarifies physical versus logical lines in C, explains how SLOC can be misused to judge developer productivity, and shows how to run cloc to produce accurate per-file SLOC reports for estimation and codebase analysis.
In Memoriam: Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. and The Mythical Man-Month
Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month is still a surprisingly sharp guide to software projects, and Jason Sachs shows why it matters even more than its old mainframe setting suggests. He revisits Brooks’ ideas on surgical teams, conceptual integrity, throwaway prototypes, and schedule estimation, then maps them to modern embedded and software engineering realities. The result is a tribute, a book review, and a practical reminder that roles, architecture, and testing still make or break delivery.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 2
A look back at a deep dive into the Mars Perseverance flight software from one of the technical leads at JPL.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 3
Jack Ganssle shows us what we can learn by studying previous failures - and why this is essential for anyone working in embedded systems.
Project Directory Organization
A tidy project tree can make a bigger difference than you might think. Stephen Friederichs lays out a practical directory scheme for small software projects, using familiar folders like src, obj, bin, test, reports, docs, and conf to keep builds, tests, and documentation from turning into a mess. He also explains why the root directory should welcome contributors, not confuse them.
Continuous Integration for Embedded Systems
Hardware dependencies make continuous integration for embedded systems harder than for pure software, yet it is essential for quality and faster feedback. This post explains the three CI types, host, non-host and hardware-in-the-loop, then compares trade-offs in cost, parallelism, timing accuracy and portability. It also outlines steps in a typical CI pipeline and highlights practical tools and plugins, including Jenkins and static analysis to automate builds and tests.
You Will Make Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable in engineering, and they grow worse when teams are distributed and communication has long round-trip delays. Jason Sachs lays out practical, low-friction tactics to keep small errors from becoming project stoppers, from applying FMEA thinking to using issue trackers, event logging, clear interface specs, and better meeting habits. The post focuses on habits you can start using today to raise team reliability.
The Missing Agile Conversation
In this article, we learn about Agile practices and how they use stories as units of development. Stories consist of a brief description, one to a few sentences. They don’t contain details sufficient to allow a developer to implement them. The Agile practice is to defer details as long as possible because conditions may change. When a developer takes on a story to implement, that’s the time for them to perform the work that has been deferred. They do this by having a conversation, a series of specific discussions working closely with the various SME’s (Subject Matter Experts) who have information relevant to the story.
Code Metrics - SLOC Count
Metrics and SLOC can trigger flashbacks for experienced engineers, but counting source lines of code still has practical uses when applied sensibly. This post clarifies physical versus logical lines in C, explains how SLOC can be misused to judge developer productivity, and shows how to run cloc to produce accurate per-file SLOC reports for estimation and codebase analysis.
Continuous Integration for Embedded Systems
Hardware dependencies make continuous integration for embedded systems harder than for pure software, yet it is essential for quality and faster feedback. This post explains the three CI types, host, non-host and hardware-in-the-loop, then compares trade-offs in cost, parallelism, timing accuracy and portability. It also outlines steps in a typical CI pipeline and highlights practical tools and plugins, including Jenkins and static analysis to automate builds and tests.
Project Directory Organization
A tidy project tree can make a bigger difference than you might think. Stephen Friederichs lays out a practical directory scheme for small software projects, using familiar folders like src, obj, bin, test, reports, docs, and conf to keep builds, tests, and documentation from turning into a mess. He also explains why the root directory should welcome contributors, not confuse them.
You Will Make Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable in engineering, and they grow worse when teams are distributed and communication has long round-trip delays. Jason Sachs lays out practical, low-friction tactics to keep small errors from becoming project stoppers, from applying FMEA thinking to using issue trackers, event logging, clear interface specs, and better meeting habits. The post focuses on habits you can start using today to raise team reliability.
Implementation Complexity, Part I: The Tower of Babel, Gremlins, and The Mythical Man-Month
Jason Sachs argues that implementation complexity often outpaces manpower and good intentions, using the Tower of Babel and Fred Brooks's The Mythical Man-Month as lenses. He walks through communication costs, Kolmogorov complexity, and interface pitfalls with concrete examples like the NEMA 5-15 outlet, then offers pragmatic approaches such as modular design, gray-box awareness, and documenting assumptions to spot the gremlins before they derail a project.
Implementation Complexity, Part II: Catastrophe, Dear Liza, and the M Word
Complex systems hide risks that often surface long after the developers move on, and maintenance usually becomes the true costliest burden. Jason Sachs walks through catastrophic engineering failures, cyclic dependencies, proprietary lock-in, supply-chain fragility, redundancy pitfalls, and software traps like state-machine bugs. The post closes with practical, engineer-focused advice on designing simpler, more maintainable embedded systems and planning for lifecycle safety and repair.
In Memoriam: Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. and The Mythical Man-Month
Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month is still a surprisingly sharp guide to software projects, and Jason Sachs shows why it matters even more than its old mainframe setting suggests. He revisits Brooks’ ideas on surgical teams, conceptual integrity, throwaway prototypes, and schedule estimation, then maps them to modern embedded and software engineering realities. The result is a tribute, a book review, and a practical reminder that roles, architecture, and testing still make or break delivery.
The Dilemma of Unwritten Requirements
Unwritten requirements quietly wreck projects, and Jason Sachs uses a humble wooden spool to illustrate how small mechanical and manufacturing choices become visible system behaviors. He contrasts craft-store spools with industrial ones to show where hidden assumptions like concentricity get dropped in the name of cost. The post urges engineers to surface externally visible trade-offs to customers or contractors and to iteratively capture discovered requirements.
Scorchers, Part 1: Tools and Burn Rate
Small purchases often pay for themselves faster than you expect, and Jason Sachs walks through the math to prove it. He shows how to compute a fully burdened labor rate, including taxes, benefits, overhead, holidays, and productive hours, then compares that rate to the price of common tools. The practical conclusion is simple: if a sub-$100 utility saves about an hour of productive work, just buy it.
Review: Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager
You don't need a PMP to manage effective engineering projects. Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager, by Kory Kogon, Suzette Blakemore, and James Wood, distills PMBOK concepts into readable, lightweight procedures for people who end up coordinating work without formal training. The book emphasizes people-first behaviors, simple process groups, and concise documentation so engineers can manage risk, scope, and change without heavy bureaucracy.
